


Think of wide open fields

by JauntyHako



Series: Post Season 5 AU [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Canon-compliant if you havent read the books or want to ignore them, Claustrophobia, Gen, Genii being dicks as usual, Vague implications of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7377622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JauntyHako/pseuds/JauntyHako
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Sheppard makes a point of knowing his teammates. So when they get captured by Genii, it doesn't take him long to figure out what's wrong with Todd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Think of wide open fields

Three missions weren't really enough to build up reasonable expectations of a person. You couldn't say "This is how this person acts in this kind of situation" after that little time. Officers who did tended to get their people killed.

If John had judged Rodney after the first three missions, he would have never gotten the chance to see the man perform astounding acts of bravery in the face of almost inevitable death. He would have never considered Teyla more than a simple village leader or Ronon more than the muscle of their team. Any good leader took the time to know his people inside and out before he made any kind of statement about what they would or wouldn't do.

 

But even with all that in mind, Todd still acted strangely.

On the first mission together, recalibrating the ZPM on M76-677 to squeeze another few decades of use out of it, Todd and Rodney constantly bickered, throwing thinly veiled insults at each other under the guise of "discussing efficiency of zero point modules within strong electromagnetic spheres, John, don't worry about it." John didn't worry, but he was profoundly annoyed and began to understand what Lorne meant when he said if he took two scientists on a mission he might as well have a wraith watch his back, and oh wait. It felt like being trapped in a lab with Rodney and Radek. Teyla, bless her soul, had more patience for their continuous back and forth and allowed John to catch up with Keras while she stayed at the ruins.

 

Todd didn't indulge Rodney in his attempts at banter this time, worked as silent as a grave and looking much the same. The only times he tore his attention from the screen on the workstation was to check if the blast doors were still closed, as if he hoped they would open by themselves. John thought that if they did open by themselves they were in more trouble than before because it meant their captors had come back for them. After only a few weeks he'd gotten so used to Rodney and Todd's banter that the rock in his stomach grew heavier for the lack of it.

 

They ran into danger on their second mission, ambushed by the inhabitants of a world that turned out to be less friendly than first impressions made them look like. As bullets whizzed over their heads, Todd reprimanded John for his naivety. The words "I told you so" weren't said in that order but the meaning was clear. John told Todd that if he weren't so easy to trust, he would never have allowed him to be on his team either, so he should just suck it up and keep shooting. To his credit, Todd sucked it up with the best of them.

While Rodney indulged in his own five minutes of panic while simultaneously listing the myriad of ways to die horribly in this situation and Teyla fought with the teeth-clenched determination of someone who did not want to think about the graveness of their situation until well out of it, and even John did his best to get his team out of this, Todd actually enjoyed himself. He ducked in and out of cover like he was playing catch with a couple of kids instead of being shot at by an angry mob. He felled a few men with trick shots about which John would have _a talk_ with him later (and definitely not to get him to show him how he did it, but to remind him that that kind of thing got people killed. Definitely) and when a bullet missed him by the width of a hair he laughed. Deep and rumbling and all within the space of a single leap, landing on top of his attacker with the grace of a cat before feeding on him and turning to the next. John knew he'd dream about this. He just wasn't sure yet if it would be a nightmare.

Teyla looked slightly sick at Todd feeding on the man, but that had been the deal. If an enemy would die by their weapons fire anyway, Todd was allowed to feed on them. At least he didn't draw the process out like some wraith did and soon he was in the fight again, catching a bullet for Teyla and acting as happy a terrier in a barrel full of rats.

 

Now he wasn't laughing. Not a single mirthful smile since the Genii weapons poked into their backs and forced them down a meandering hallway into the bunker, the doors closing behind them. Sora, stripped of rank and bent on revenge, promised them a slow death of asphyxiation if the wraith (she spat on the ground when looking at Todd, who didn't rise to the bait) didn't grow hungry and feed on them first. She took Teyla with her, though, and John did not think about what she was doing to her right now. He thought about a lot of things to stop thinking about Teyla, defenseless and tied up, in the same room with Sora.

Perhaps that was why Todd wasn't enjoying himself. Maybe he realised that John wasn't in any mood to joke or maybe he even worried about Teyla himself. John had no way of knowing. They only had their third mission together a week ago, the first time that shit really hit the fan.

 

One of their science teams hadn't checked in from their assignment on a supposedly uninhabited planet and no contact could be established. The vegetation grew so thick and fast it had almost overgrown the Stargate in the few hours since the science team came through. Searching by jumper proved to be impossible and the large wildlife made searching for lifesigns a moot exercise. Although it did help them avoid a thing looking like the horrible lovechild of a jaguar and a crocodile. Todd joked it would have made a nice accessory for his coat and, deliberatley misinterpreting Rodney's derisive snort, promised to make something nice for him, too. It was the starting point for their usual arguments and while they scoured the immediate surroundings of the gate, John entertained himself with the thought of a wraith bent over a sewing machine, making crocodile leather purses. That led to an image of wraith running fashion catwalks and luckily at that point they found the scientists. John's relief was short-lived. All five of them were strapped to bombs, huge devices sitting in their laps.

 

"Who did this? Are they still around?" John asked and got his answer in the form of multiple square metres of bush transforming into humans. They jolted back at the sight of a wraith standing calmly among the team, but caught themselves quickly.  
They were survivors from a world destroyed by wraith, they said, and held Atlantis responsible for not sending help. Now Atlantis would pay, either in medical supplies and food or the lives of their people. John tried to negotiate, to get their people free from the bombs which Rodney, whispering urgently in his ear, told him were volatile and likely to blow at the slightest jolt. He also said something about the planet's unstable tectonic fields and John really didn't want to hear the word earthquake right now. Long negotiations were out of the question. As if he read his thoughts, and John wasn't entirely convinced he couldn't no matter what he said, Todd raised his weapon and killed two humans while John, Teyla and Rodney took care of the rest before they could set off the bombs. Without needing the order both Todd and Rodney set to work on the bombs on each side.

 

"I am interested to see if you can disarm your device before I am finished with all four." Todd said quietly but amused as Rodney huffed indignantly.

 

"Please, I disarmed more complex bombs in kindergarten."

 

"Would you be willing to wager a few hours of work to prove it?"

 

John would have told them to focus but they didn't sacrifice efficiency for their little argument and it did seem to calm the scientists down. All went well until one of them, and they would argue for days who it had been, triggered a failsafe and a timer. Suddenly a fairly reasonable goal became a race against time and Rodney and Todd had just started on their second bomb. They both grew quiet, working as quickly as they could while Teyla brought the two freed scientists out of the potential blast radius. Rodney let out a quiet sound of joy, shortly followed by Todd, who however stopped Rodney from beginning work on the fifth and last bomb.

 

"I'd advise you to seek shelter. I will take care of the last bomb." Todd said and in his voice was a quiet authority that made Rodney argue only a little before leading the other two scientists away. And then it was just one scared woman with Todd by her side and Sheppard at his back.

 

"You should leave, too, John Sheppard." he said. "You will not survive an explosion."

 

"Well, neither will you. Not at this range."

 

Todd said nothing for a while, though if it was because he didn't have an answer or because he had to concentrate, John didn't know.

 

"Fair enough." he said at last and bent deeper, and from where Sheppard stood _that_ position would have looked anything but innocent, Todd's head all but buried in the woman's lap, if it weren't for the wires sticking out left and right.

 

Even with three lives, including his own, riding on his success, Todd never lost his calm, until the bomb was safely disarmed and the scientist fell into the wraith's arms, momentarily forgetting who and what he was.

 

He wasn't calm now, although it took John several minutes to figure it out. He didn't panic, like Rodney did, let his anger out on the machinery like John would have, nor spoke about the inevitability of death and facing it with dignity like Teyla.

His tells lay in the unnatural stiffness of his shoulders, the deliberately deep breaths, his refusal to look at anything but the task at hand and suddenly John knew exactly what was going on.

 

"How's it going?" he asked casually, as if Todd was building a house of cards rather than a working way of escape. He left the terminal and went over to what had to be a fuse box of some sort as Todd tore out the plastic covering to expose the wires underneath. Rodney was still busy at the second terminal but gave Todd a curt wave when he looked to him for affirmation.

 

"It is going, Sheppard." Todd said and if he hadn't looked for it John never would have picked up on the tremor in his voice.

 

"Good. Good. Just, you know, wanted to make sure." John paused, wondering what the hell he was doing. Todd barely kept it together and they needed him if they wanted to make it out of here and save Teyla. He desperately wished she was here. Teyla would know what to do.

 

"Colonel Sheppard? Colonel Sheppard, are you receiving this?"

 

Well, speak of the devil. Rodney and Todd interrupted their work in favour of crowding around Sheppard and his radio.

 

"Teyla, that you?" He asked, disbelief written all over his face.

 

"It is me, Colonel. I managed to free myself and am on my way to you. Can you give me your position?"

 

Rodney's finger rose up as if tapping against invisible glass.

 

"Yes!", he said, scurrying back towards the terminal. John followed more slowly. "Yes, I can do that. Give me just a second."

 

"Be swift, Dr McKay. There are several men searching for me."

 

Rodney mumbled something about working under pressure and John turned to Todd.

 

"See? Told you my friends would come."  


For a second Todd looked at him as if he had no idea what he was talking about. Then he chuckled, if weakly.

 

"Yes, Sheppard. You were right."

 

Rodney gave through their coordinates and then slumped against the terminal.

 

"The doors can be opened from the outside." he explained at John's questioning glance. "We just have to wait for Teyla."

 

John wasn't used to being the damsel in distress but getting a breather allowed him to refocus his efforts on Todd. Even with Teyla opening the blast doors they still had to escape the compound. He couldn't have Todd losing it now. He sat next to the wraith, leaning against the ice cold stone wall, flashes of his own imprisonment crossing before him.

Todd was in another place entirely. His eyes flitted across the room, stopped on all sides by walls that seemed to come closer with every passing second. The room was darker somehow, shadows where John's mind told him none should be, coming from different lightsources, lamps burning three years in the past. He blinked rapidly and the room returned to normal, although Todd was still deceptively quiet.

Wraith were telepathic, John thought. He wondered if Todd's fear seeped into his own brain. How did you comfort a claustrophobic alien of untold age and power? No, that was the wrong approach. Todd was Todd. They weren't that different from each other. So how did you comfort any person with claustrophobia and PTSD?

 

"Did I ever tell you about where I grew up?" Sheppard asked. Todd merely shook his head, snarling softly as if to tell him he listened. Wraith weren't really verbal at the best of times. Vocal, yes, but not verbal. These days Todd mostly managed to use his words when he communicated with the humans of the expedition instead of growling at them. John didn't fault him for falling back on the kind of communication that came easier to him.

 

"Well, my dad had houses all across the States. But the most memories I have from our place in Maine. It was one of our biggest mansions with enough rooms to house a city. You could get lost in that place. But we spent most of our time outside. My brother and I. We, uh, used to play catch outside and the garden, you can't really call it a garden, I mean it was big enough that you could stand at one end and just barely see the other end at the horizon. And beyond that were just fields as far as the eye could see."

 

It could have been wishful thinking but he thought Todd relaxed a little. He did tilt his head towards John, listening quietly.

 

"There was this creek, you had to walk maybe an hour to reach it but you could hear the water bubbling all the way from our back door. We'd trudge there when it rained, Dave and I in our gumboots and buckets. Our parents were never worried about us disappearing because you could see the river from almost every window in our house and then some. Well, Dad didn't worry much at all, but still."

 

"What did you do at the creek?"

 

John looked to Rodney until he realised that the meek voice was Todd's, that John telling stories from his childhood was probably the only thing keeping him in the here and now. He really wished Teyla would get here soon. Shooting at things always calmed John down and he had yet to see Todd lose his cool in a combat situation.

 

"Uh, hunted for frogs, mostly. We didn't really do anything with them, except that one time when Dave shoved one down my shirt. I screamed so loud my mother came running. She thought I got hurt but Dave was laughing so hard and I was beating him with my bucket. We must have looked like we lost our minds. For weeks he'd make croaking noises everytime our parents weren't paying attention. And there was that one time when …"

 

John was interrupted by the hiss of the blast doors opening. Fresh air blew in blissfully cool on his skin. He got up, along with Todd who brushed past Teyla with a grateful nod and his weapon drawn. Apparently the prospect of shooting some Genii did cheer him up. John let him take point and secured their six as they worked themselves through the complex. Teyla remembered the way out and gave instructions when necessary, a godsend considering Todd's sense of direction. After their first small skirmish with Genii soldiers he was calm enough to strike up some more or less friendly banter with Rodney.

 

"What about Sora?" John asked Teyla after even the third group of Genii failed to produce an angry redhead out for blood.

 

"She is … not a concern." Teyla said and the way she phrased it John didn't press the matter further.

 

 

By the time they returned to Atlantis Todd was his usual confident self again, striding through the gateroom as if he owned the place. It was enough to make John forget he'd ever been dangerously close to a full blown panic attack.

Todd however, seemed less willing to let him forget about the incident. He approached Sheppard in the mess hall while he had his lunch.

John had thought it would be a problem persuading Todd to ditch the leather coat for the Atlantis issued jackets but he'd never breathed a word about it. Although as a military commander perhaps he understood the importance of uniforms. But if anyone had hoped it would make the presence of a wraith walking free on Atlantis less jarring they were wrong. Somehow Todd managed to stand out even more, as if someone had taken a shark and put a shirt on it. After just a few weeks people hadn't stopped staring at the latest addition to John Sheppard's team. Todd pretended he didn't notice.

 

"Hey there, buddy. What can I do for you?" John asked as Todd sat down across the table.

 

"I wanted to thank you, John Sheppard." Todd said. John wondered if he derived some weird pleasure from saying his full name, since he did it more often than anyone else he knew. Maybe it was a wraith thing. Maybe it was a Todd thing.

 

"Thank me? For what?"

 

"For guiding me through what could have become a breakdown if you hadn't intervened. I realise now I should have informed you of my fear of enclosed spaces, but nonetheless you helped me overcome it in that moment and I thank you for it."

 

"Huh." Sheppard said, not really knowing how to respond to something like this. With a curt "hey, thanks" he could have dealt with. This level of formality seemed to require more than a wave and a "yeah, don't worry about it."

 

"Anytime. I mean, let's hope we don't get a repeat incident anytime soon, but, y'know, if there's anything you need … uh."

 

If anything, his uncertainty amused Todd. He did that thing where he didn't really laugh but his growling sounded more benevolent than usual.

 

"Your eloquence astounds me. Would you mind my company for a while longer?"

 

John raised an eyebrow but gestured Todd to stay. They didn't speak anymore about his claustrophobia or the Genii, but traded stories of their respective childhoods, something John never really thought about wraith having. Apparently older brothers playing pranks on you crossed cultures and while Todd's stories featured fewer frogs and more strange alien creatures with tentacles and shark teeth, they were light-hearted and took both their minds off the mission.

 

It only occurred to John much later, when they'd both gone to their separate quarters, that maybe Todd had needed to put some more distance between himself and that cell and had been too proud to ask outright. That at least was something John knew.  
None of his team, with Teyla being the sole exception, dealt very well with their fears, himself included. He made a mental note to find out if wraith had any taste for alcohol.

Just in case.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not continue to write in this continuity. I have a whole canon divergent post season 5 AU planned out, without all the uncomfortable retro-virus/colonialist parallels and with Todd as a permanent part of the team, so we'll see where that goes.


End file.
